Commonwealth’s New Corvette Campaign Tests Driver Not Car

For the launch of the new 2014 Corvette Stingray, the ad agency Commonwealth is making use of something completely new for automotive advertising: brainwaves. With the “World’s First Reverse Test Drive”, this campaign actually gets into the head of the driver to show what it’s like to drive this powerful vehicle.

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The ad agency compiled a diverse group of test drivers from a range of backgrounds (Fitfluential CEO Kelly Olexa, lifestyle blogger Terry McFly, entrepreneur/restaurateur Phillip Cooley, Gran Turismo producer Kazunori Yamauchi, and Coolhunting.com co-founder Evan Orensten) to test out the new Stingray on the race track.

As it turned out, it wasn’t the drivers who pushed this car to it’s limits; the Stingray pushed them to theirs. Each driver’s biostatistics were carefully monitored as they tore around the race track. Devices recorded brain waves and biometric info then cross referenced them with the car’s telematics data.

How Commonwealth Captured the Cerebral and the Physical Element

The primary objective of this advertising experiment was to demonstrate to viewers the driving experience in a completely new way. Getting behind the wheel of the Stingray has a transcendent effect on those lucky enough to drive one. Corvette has taken a whole new approach in designing this car and that provides a revolutionary driving experience according to Global Deputy Chief Creative Officer Andreas Dahlqvist.

An experience like this can be intimate and even intangible, so how does an advertising group like Commonwealth show potential buyers what this looks and feels like? They needed to do something that had never been done before. As Dahlqvist puts it, “Some of it is physical and some of it is cerebral. We captured both.”

In addition to the film, Commonwealth created the “Precision Challenge” an online game that actually tests the spatial recognition, recall and reaction times of the viewer.

Overcoming Challenges in Production

The agency worked with brain-wave and biometric experts and the production company B-Reel to construct the setup that tracked the data compiled on the drivers. Fortunately, this was not the first time that B-Reel was asked to conduct neuro-reading experiments. They worked on a campaign for furniture maker Varier where childs’ brain activity was translated into textile patterns.

Interestingly, the state-of-the-art digital challenges were not as difficult to overcome as the more commonplace production hiccups. “In the midst of all this high-tech stuff, we found ourselves having to do something as basic as shaving the chests of a couple of our drivers to attach the monitoring devices,” explained Dahlqvist.

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